Chicago's gun ban unravels

Supreme Court rules against city

Daley vows to quickly rewrite gun control ordinance

June 28, 2010|By Hal Dardick and Dahleen Glanton, Tribune reporters

City Hall is rewriting Chicago's gun ordinance to tighten registration requirements in response to the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark ruling Monday that crippled the city's handgun ban and granted citizens across the country the right to legally keep weapons in their home for protection.

Though the court stopped short of overturning the ban, Mayor Richard Daley conceded that the ruling extending Second Amendment rights to people in cities and states effectively gutted the city's 28-year-old ban. He said City Hall has begun preparing stricter gun control measures aimed at keeping guns out of the hands of criminals and making legal gun owners more accountable for their weapons.

"It means that Chicago's current handgun ban is unenforceable, so we're working to rewrite our ordinance in a reasonable and responsible way to protect Second Amendment rights and protect Chicagoans from gun violence," the mayor said.

The Supreme Court returned the case to the lower courts, leaving Chicago with the option of continuing its fight to preserve its handgun ordinance. But the court made it clear that such bans violate the Constitution and infringe on every law-abiding citizen's "right to keep and bear arms."

The new measures are being refined to conform with the ruling and could be presented to the City Council Police and Fire Committee as early as this week, officials said.

"We are moving aggressively and swiftly to get something in place to make sure that citizens of Chicago are protected," said the committee chairman, Ald. Anthony Beale, 9th. "We want to make sure that whatever we craft … can't get struck down again."

For Daley, who has championed gun control throughout his tenure, the ruling was a defeat. He said it shows that the Supreme Court is out of touch with the crime-fighting challenges that mayors such as him face.

"They don't seem to appreciate the full scope of gun violence in America," Daley said. "That will continue until we understand that there are reasonable … and responsible steps we can take as a nation to help end the needless gun violence and harm that irresponsible people bring on our friends and our family and our loved ones."

But for Otis McDonald, who took on the city and won, the ruling was as much about correcting misdeeds done to his African-American ancestors as giving law-abiding residents the right to have guns at home to protect themselves from violent crime.

"I was fed up with drug dealers and gang-bangers messing with my home, my property and eventually threatening my life, and somebody saying that all we needed was to get guns out of the houses," said the 71-year-old McDonald, who was at the Supreme Court when the ruling was issued.

"I couldn't take that anymore. I knew I had to look somewhere and find somebody to do something about this. It was all designed by a great power. … It was all for a reason."

On his journey through the legal process, McDonald said he came to understand more about his history and the "slave codes" enacted in Southern states during the Civil War that prohibited slaves from owning guns. After slavery was abolished, states adopted "black codes" that applied to freed blacks.

"There was a wrong done a long time ago that dates back to slavery time," said McDonald. "I could feel the spirit of those people running through me as I sat in the Supreme Court."

The Supreme Court decision was no surprise to city officials. Two years ago, the court, by the same 5-4 vote, overturned a similar gun ban in Washington, D.C., declaring that the Second Amendment applied to federal jurisdictions such as the District of Columbia. Chicago's case, which also included Oak Park, answered the question of whether the 14th Amendment, which extends the Bill of Rights to states, was applicable.

The court reiterated its position rejecting gun bans and declined once again to set clear standards for how cities could establish laws regarding registration, training, monitoring ownership and new technology to trace guns used in crimes.

The ruling opens the door to a new round of lawsuits, gun advocates said, to ensure that cities such as Chicago, which already has strict gun registration laws, don't enact new laws designed to make it more difficult for citizens to legally acquire weapons.

"This is not the end. We are closer to the beginning," said Alan Gura, the attorney who represented plaintiffs in both the Chicago and the D.C. cases. "It is crystal clear that the Second Amendment contains a meaningful, powerful right that individuals have, and government must respect that right. There will be other cases that come up as people assert their rights under different circumstances."